Back in the 90s, the federal government ran a bold experiment, giving people vouchers to move out of high-poverty neighborhoods into low-poverty ones. They wanted to test if housing policy could be hope – whether an address change alone could improve jobs, earnings and education. The answer to that seems obvious. But it did not at all turn out as they expected. Years later, when new researchers went back to the data on this experiment, they stumbled on something big. Something that is changing housing policy across the country today. Today's episode was originally hosted by Karen Duffin, produced by Aviva DeKornfeld, and edited by Bryant Urstadt. The update was hosted by Amanda Aronczyk, produced by Sean Saldana and fact checked by Sierra Juarez. Our supervising executive producer is Alex Goldmark. Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
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Five years ago, we did an episode about the American dream.
What does it take to climb up that economic ladder?
And how real is that ladder anyway?
Well, since then, there's been kind of an explosion in answers to those questions led by work from Raj Chetty and his team based at Harvard.
They've got some new work out just recently.
So here's our original episode and then we'll talk with Raj Chetty about the latest insight into the American Dream from 2024.
Here is Karen Duffin.
Back in 2019.